The Shrugging Out Podcast

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

A useful explanation of the attitudes and behavior of some people, including many of the Progressive Left, is that they are addicted to grievance.

Normal people handle the normal events of life normally, including slights, unfair treatment, and plain old screwing over suffered at the hands of others. They ignore pinpricks, address minor wounds, and deal with larger injustices appropriately. They fight fire with fire.

Grievance addicts do not. Everything that happens to a grievance addict is a catastrophic offense, a crime against humanity. If a mosquito bites, clobber it with a sledgehammer.

GAs at best are a nuisance. At worst they use their grievances to accrue great power, which they wield to the serious detriment of millions. Grievance addictions explain much of the progressive left's actions, whether in or out of power. Grievance is what they do best.

BTW, the bucolic setting pictured contains four objects with something in common. The coffee table in the center is called out in the podcast. Hint: They are made of wood from a special source, as described early in the show. Give a listen and find out.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Too many people, in my view, go through life as a struggle against something.

Don't get me wrong--life IS a struggle at times, and you do need to fight your way through problems you encounter in your life. But life should be more than a struggle against something. We shouldn't live strictly to avoid negative things. We should be striving for positive experiences, positive outcomes.

Preppers, some of them, make their lives nothing more than preparing for disaster. Being prepared is prudent, but as the sole motivation for life it makes you dreary and one-dimensional. In this show, I explore the necessity of a more positive outlook on life, and the many benefits. And I talk about what it might mean to you and me to live positively.

Should the Church be a cultural vanguard, leading the charge? Or should the church be shelter from the cultural storm?

That depends, I think, on what's happening with the culture.

If the culture is moving towards God and His Word, then the Church, if it's doing what it should be doing, will be right there as part of the vanguard. But if the culture is spiraling downward, out of control and away from God, then the Church should be an anchor point, a place of shelter from the cultural storm.

What should you do if you find yourself in a church that is considering the issue of same-sex marriage, led by a minister who favors it? We talk about a real-life example in this episode.

What are the arguments for and against same-sex marriage? What is God's law when it comes to homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and how do we know that?

Monday, July 17, 2017

I recently came across an outstanding novel about economic collapse by Lionel Shriver, The Mandibles, A Family, 2029-2047. (It's been out just over a year, but I'm a little slow, what can I say?)

I enjoyed The Mandibles so much that I've devoted the entire podcast to recounting the story and how it compares to "The Collapse" that so many of us have been anticipating (and talking about) for so long.

Lionel Shriver is a well-known award-winning author who turned her considerable literary talents not long ago to the unsustainable financial problems facing the U.S. and the rest of the world. The result is a supremely entertaining and realistic page-turner that immediately lept to the top of my list of favorite "collapse fiction", a genre which will some day be compared and contrasted to the real thing.

Well, we jump the comparison gun in this show, testing The Mandibles against various expectations we have for the upcoming real-world Collapse, including:

Stock market collapse

Demise of the dollar as the world's reserve currency

Repudiation of the US debt

Confiscation of gold

Hyperinflation (or will it be Deflation?)

Widespread civil unrest

Aftermath and recovery

I know I say this all the time, but this really IS a great show! Give it a listen!

***WARNING!*** This podcast is loaded to the rafters with plot spoilers--but the book is such a good read that won't matter!

Monday, June 5, 2017

Big Medicine must be destroyed. And CashDoc is just the thing to destroy it.

CashDoc is a little bit like Uber for the medical business. CashDoc connects people who need medical care with medical care providers ready to serve them.

With today's high "insurance" premiums, and super-high annual deductibles, millions of people are spending their own cash on their own medical care. And those costs have gone up up every year, year after year, for decades.

CashDoc blows up the expensive "confuseopoly" of Big Medicine, and brings the advantages of open markets and transparent pricing to the little guy, the average individual or family consumer of medical care. At the same time, doctors and other medical practitioners can focus on caring for patients while avoiding the costly bureaucratic thicket of Big Medicine.

Combine CashDoc with a cost sharing mechanism--medical "assurance"--from organizations such as Samaritan Ministries, and you have the advantages of an open market coupled with affordable protection against unforeseen medical expenses including emergencies.

It's too bad that CashDoc doesn't exist today, but it's an idea whose time has come, so it's all but inevitable that someone will make it happen. When they do, we will have a viable alternative to the super-high costs and crazy incentives of Big Medicine (hey, it's December, and you've finally burnt through your sky-high deductible, how about we operate on that shoulder that's been bothering you?)

Give this show a listen, and let me know if you're ready for CashDoc. I am!

To listen to the podcasts

Just click on the title of the episode to start your PC's default media player (Windows Media, for most people). Or right-click on the title and download the file to your PC, and use any MP3-compatible player you like.

You can also find The Shrugging Out Podcast on iTunes and Stitcher!

Get "The Shrugging Out Podcast" via iTunes!

Click hereto subscribe to the iTunes podcast.
Or copy this link into any feed reader you use:
"http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShruggingOut"